


our place among the infinities

by maenam



Category: Turn (TV 2014)
Genre: 2nd person POV, F/M, Gen, Meandering, S03E04, Spoilerific, The Good Ship Annlett, angst ahoy, but not a fix-it, kind-of-streamy, reaction-fic, sorryiluguys
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-20
Updated: 2016-05-20
Packaged: 2018-06-09 14:00:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,634
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6910195
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/maenam/pseuds/maenam
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Anna makes the crossing under the cover of night.</p>
            </blockquote>





	our place among the infinities

**Author's Note:**

> Emerging from the shadows here to post something because as much as I love lurking this fandom, I need a place to drop this steaming pile of angst after what happened earlier this week. Yes, AO3, you are the dumping grounds for my horribly melancholy, spurr-of-the-moment-yet-keeping-me-up-all-night-heartbroken fanfiction. So thanks for that. Also I really love Anna, I don't care what anyone says. As another aside, the title comes from the below mentioned poem. Please be warned that if 2nd person POV and somewhat stream-of-consciousness rambling are styles that put you off, this piece probably isn't for you. Otherwise, enjoy.

 

 _We’ve looked and looked, but after all where are we?_  
_Do we know any better where we are,_  
_And how it stands between the night tonight,_  
_And a man with a smoky lantern chimney?_  
_How different from the way it ever stood?_  
  
_— Robert Frost, The Star-Splitter_

 

Not long into the journey you realize you have become seasick as you are borne across the Sound in a creaking old rowboat to the heart of the Continental hive. Having grown up near, on, and in the water every summer since you could walk, this minor annoyance doesn’t seem to make sense — but, in all honesty, what _does_ , of late? You shake your head to yourself, or perhaps you’re shivering, given the fog that follows the boat and covers any rippling tracks made over the darkened glass of the bay. The temptation to slip overboard and disappear into the mist is almost too much but your thoughts are interrupted by the modest vessel’s captain before you can make good on them.

“Have a lie down, Annie,” Caleb says, his voice sudden through the calm quiet. You’re too tired to be startled but you can still follow directions, so eventually you do as he suggests, sliding into the bottom of the boat until its sides come up to shield you all around. Muscle and bone protest, inherently knowing they shouldn’t be forced into such a position, but you’re indifferent as all hell. Left to right your head sways with the roll of each minuscule wave; you should feel worse this way but for some reason the initial nausea begins to subside and you give Caleb some credit for his forethought. It’s small, but you’re truly glad you can actually trust someone in this moment.

“We’ve a while to go, still. I’ll wake ya when we get there.” You nod absently, not really listening as his words are somewhere in the distance anyhow. He assumes you’ll be able to rest and you almost do, too, but even in reiterating your exhaustion you find sleep a most evasive thing. You close your eyes and think you’re about to drift off but a bump over the water or the splash of the oars has you alert and focused just enough to keep you from falling into dreams. So you resolve to focus on the sky instead because it’s strange how clear the night is despite the surrounding fog and the storm currently raging within.

Counting stars begins simply enough but soon you find yourself overwhelmed at the vast expanse and just how little you’re really able to take in. You wipe away a frustrated tear and decide to find comfort in their brightness, a sort of clarity that is unexpected but welcome all the same, if only to make this trip more bearable in any way. Unconsciously your eyes start tracing constellations, and someone whispers their names to you after each one is complete, and you are astonished that your memory is still quite good, though you berate yourself for ever thinking that you would forget. The tears come, then, in multitudes and so quickly that you are too slow to brush them aside so you give up and just let them gather in the shells of your ears and the hollows of your collarbone like a spring rain you desperately wish you could go back and savor if only for a little longer.

Fit to burst, your chest is tight within your bodice and you’re not sure if you’re breathing anymore but Caleb continues to row without a glance back. You grasp at yourself, arms like iron over your ribs and it becomes immediately apparent that you are but a wisp of your former self, and the thought occurs to you that you haven’t eaten — properly enjoyed or even tasted a meal — in days, weeks, and you’re honestly shocked that you’re not dead of starvation in your room back at Whitehall. It is a genuine wonder you’ve remained in such a state instead of simply dissolving into sand or slipping like a dull ribbon through a crack in the floorboards. Some semblance of laughter bubbles up though it does not pass your lips. You’ve always been in utter shambles but he loved you anyway. Half-dead but he kissed you as though you were alive, and all you had to show for it was an accusatory gesture and wild eyes that you hoped against hope he would see through _just this once, please, know that I’m lying and this time it’s_ ** _for_** _you, to_ ** _save_** _you_.

Your plan didn’t entirely backfire but you also hadn’t expected him to shoulder the blame. You could count on him to be incredibly stubborn, that much is true, but as you’d watched his face crumble in an avalanche of despair, witnessed by all of your shared peers and contemporaries, no less, you had never before felt so undeserving of such a love. You could have been a viper preparing to strike, a jagged stone laying haphazardly on the beach, a rebel aiming down the barrel at his temple — you _were_ all of these things, at some point or another — and, devastatingly, he would still house affection for you. Your insides curl and the nausea starts to set in once more. “Forgive me,” he’d breathed, and even if you had been able to ask, _For what?!_ he was already down the hall and doing his best to vanish in your wake.

Caleb stops and turns, concern gently crinkling the corners of his brown eyes and he makes a face like he wants to say something but for once he doesn’t. You avoid his gaze, returning yours to the sky and after resting a friendly hand over your ankle he begins rowing once more. Your head feels swollen, overfilled by thoughts of grief and regret and the sheer enormity of all your losses tallied into one sum. After the initial release, the sobs soon taper off and you fall still as the natural ebb and flow of being ferried along takes precedence once more.

You are floating down a river of stars, their heavenly bodies reflecting in your eyes. Somehow now you are calm, nearly weightless and trailing along, directionless but strangely unafraid. You wish you could spend the rest of your days at sea because trying to make a home on land is just too cumbersome and heartbreaking, though a ship is no place for a woman. Neither is camp, Caleb had warned unnecessarily, but it’s not like you haven’t spent most of your life surrounded by men — playing it tough comes naturally to you, and you’ve always been particularly talented at disappearing in a crowd when the time arises. In any case, you hope General Washington can find some use for you. Your chapter in Setauket has summarily come to an end but perhaps you were meant to be closer to the cause all along.

“Ready, Annie?” and then a thrust of wood against sand signifies that you have reached your intended destination. In good time, too, for the darkness of the late hour still gives the both of you some cover. Caleb sets about unloading the boat and you take on what few belongings you’d brought, then helping him in mutual silence to hide the small vessel in the murky underbrush. Once all is said and done you prepare to set off, but not without a final, weary look back at the shore across the Sound, which now seems like an entire ocean and lifetime away.

You recall the night Edmund Hewlett took you stargazing. The telescope in his possession remains one of the most remarkable tools you’ve ever been invited to use and you can still see the burst of starlight it provided when you’d looked through it, as if maps of the night sky had been gently imprinted on the backs of your eyelids. They often appeared right as you were falling asleep or just before you woke, reminders of how small you were in the grand scheme of the revolution, of America, of the universe; but also of how big it felt to be of the utmost importance to someone else, the magnitude of which was always glaringly apparent yet, until that moment at the altar, never fully realized. Watching this man fall in love with you had been perplexing and incredibly intimate, and for all your resistance, you could not deny that your own feelings had grown. Beyond intelligence and espionage, the possibility of a viable future seemed within your grasp... but somehow you always knew it wasn’t meant to be and you had to destroy everything in order to preserve just one.

Finally out of Abe’s crosshairs, Edmund makes his leave for Scotland with his life. A life that may remain unfulfilled, unaccepting, and even underutilized upon his return, and it pains you to think that such an educated, kind, and decent man will go to waste. But he is _alive_ , he still exists upon this earth, and this fact is the only one that can hold a candle to the culmination of darkness where your heart used to be.

The sound of the morning’s first birdsong ushers you back to the present. The sky transitions from black to grey and the stars go back into hiding as the sun slowly rises on a new day. Caleb appears at your elbow, respectfully patient with your reverie but no less mindful of the trek ahead. He takes your hand but doesn’t have to pull hard to get you moving. What should be a sigh of relief is nothing more than air escaping your lungs.

Who would man the telescope now? You can only faintly speculate as you swallow your sickness and place one foot numbly in front of the other.


End file.
